


Twin Oaks

by frozennightmare



Series: Children of the Wild Ones 'Verse [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Torture, angel!Rose, hunter!Martha, memories of hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozennightmare/pseuds/frozennightmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Ohio, a girl named Anna starts hearing angels; in London, Rose has been hearing them all along. With all of Heaven and Hell at their door, the Doctor and Rose try to reconstruct what's left of their relationship, both Anna and Rose hurtling toward an ending that neither of them wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twin Oaks

 

 

 

_Fire, dripping off the long curl of a pair of tongs, iron blazing red-hot beneath them, inching ever closer to her skin. “I think I’ve given you enough of a reprieve, darling.” the demon whispers into her ear, not a thing she can see clearly with her neck twisted like this. “Five minutes, that’s just enough, isn’t it?”_

“Rose, you okay?”

_“Go to hell.” she spits between gasps._

_“Sorry,love, we’re already there.” A coal lands on her shoulder, sizzling into her skin with a damp hiss. Rose lets out a whimpering little shriek, biting down on her lip until she can taste blood so it won’t get anything else out of her._

“Rose, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

_“Stubborn little thing, but you’ll break in the end. They always do.”  A second coal, this time placed carefully in the hollow of her neck, flesh smoldering softly with daggers of pain shooting up her neck. Rose can’t hold back the scream this time. “You could help me get a promotion, you know. They say Alistair’s got the prize of Heaven on the rack. If you took my job, I’d get to go help him out.” A handful of other coals, dappling her skin like raindrops. “The longer it takes you to say yes, the more creative I get to be.”_

“Rose!”

She reaches for the hands grabbing her shoulders and lashes out violently as she surfaces from the nightmare, the Doctor grabbing at her wrists and holding her back before she can do any real damage. She can’t breathe for a good two minutes, gasping desperately, sweat beading at her temples. The Doctor pulls her in instinctively, letting her head rest against his chest as she settles, running his hands through her hair. “It’s over.” he mutters over and over. “I got you, you’re safe.”

She had been looking forward to the wake-up call; hopefully something sugary and ridiculously sweet, a rising chorus of “I missed you”’s and sounds indescribable by words, the utter joy she had felt last night spilling out into something a little more tactile. Instead it seems Hell has once again stolen that from her. All she can think of now is the hammering of her own heart, fingers curled into a ball up against his chest, trying not to break down again.

 

“You feeling better?” he asks as she walks back into the console room, hair still dripping from her shower. He’s perched like an awkward bird on the couch, tea in one hand, the TARDIS humming as they orbit some distant planet. Rose nods silently before sitting down next to him, letting his arm drape over her shoulder in the most comforting way he can.

“I’m sorry.” she muddles into his shoulder. “I get nightmares sometimes. It happens.”

He’d promised last night to go out on a limb and believe her, but he’s starting to really and truly hang on to everything. He also wants to snap the neck of whoever traumatized Rose so badly. Although she could probably do that herself.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Thanks.” She sits in silence for a second before managing to pull herself together for the time being. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Chronologically, I guess. Every good story had a beginning.”

“And you know where this one starts.” She shakes herself off and begins the tale. “It was Cas-Castiel- who pulled me out, him and one of his comrades. They were going to rescue someone else, I just got picked up along the way.”

“Forcibly pulling a soul out of another dimension- pulling a _body_ , too, actually, cause you fell in- that’s got to leave a mark.”

“Yeah, it did.” Rose lets the shimmer on her wrist flick off, and the Doctor leaps forward and pulls his glasses out of his pocket. “How’d you do that?”

“Remember how you were always going on about how it was weird the TARDIS never did anything to me after I absorbed her? Well, I think she did. It just took being brought back from the dead to figure it out.”

“The huon-dosed cells would have remained dormant until they received some kind of biological shock,restarting your heart would be more than enough. How’d you end up with the sword?”

“It was another angel’s who died rescuing that first person I mentioned. Cas just gave it to me so I’d make it out alive.”

“Another _angels'_? Cas and his friend are- well, I guess that makes sense, if there’s one there’s got to be the other. Go on.”

“Couple of months later, Cas zaps me to the Winchesters’. They’re brothers, Sam and Dean. Dean’s the one who the angels were down there for in the first place. They’re- well, to be honest, you wouldn’t like them. They’re hunters. All those things that go bump in the night- werewolves, ghosts,vampires,demons, folktales- they kill them. Martha’s one too.”

“And these people are your _friends_? They must have really dragged you into it.”

“No, no, not really.”

“Rose.” His fascinated expression goes flat.

“Usually, the things they kill have a pretty sizable track record of their own. They’re saving peoples lives! I’m not trying to make it better, they’re just not all bad.” _I thought it would help me find you_. “They thought you were one, too- a phoenix.”

“A phoenix?” He laughs. ‘Well, I’ve certainly heard that one before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, ancient China, Africa, couple of other planets. Is that why Martha wanted me dead?”

“Sort of. Doctor, ever since I came back, I...hear things. Angels talking.”

“Eavesdropping on angels? I like this one.”

“No, but it’s not good, it’s horrible, really. There’s a couple of demons trying to jumpstart the Apocalypse- the actual one in the Bible. They’re trying to break the seals on the devil’s cage in Hell. One of those seals requires the ashes of a phoenix, so the hunters were trying to get them and stash them before the demons could. Doctor, we need to go back.”

“No, we’re not. You’re here. It’s done with. The hunters seems more than capable than handling this on their own. If things get really ugly, then we’ll step in.”

“Except it’s not that simple. I’m a part of this now, I can’t just run away?”

“Why?”

She turns over to take his hands. “The reason Cas pulled me out was because he believed I was an angel who’d ripped out my Grace and fell to Earth. Became human.”

“Rose, you can’t-”

“Look.” This can go both ways now, his little psychic maneuver, and she cracks open the mental link herself.  All those things she saw in the alleyway, her _memories_ of being an angel, and the Doctor just recoils in shock.

“Oh.”

“I don’t want it back.” she says. “My Grace. I like being human, I like all the weird and shitty things we have to do. “

“But if we go back, you might have to.”

Rose nods. “Yeah, I might.” She gets up and starts walking around the TARDIS nervously.

“Those demons,” the Doctor starts, and she realizes with a lurching feeling that she’d given him that entire fiasco. “In the alleyway. Did you-?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“I don't like it,  but I understand.” He pauses. “Before we go anywhere, there’s one thing I want to do first. We need to check on that Torchwood portal, make sure it’s closed. Don’t want anyone else falling in.”

“Alright.”

He bounds up and starts wildly setting things on the TARDIS, that schoolboy grin on his face again. “What is it?” Rose asks, and he smiles at her.

“You’re back. That’s all I need.” He pulls down the central lever and the TARDIS crashes into life, stumbling to a halt a few seconds later. The Doctor runs to grab his coat off the coral and make for the door.

“Wait!” shouts Rose.

“What?”

She presses a hand to his chest, eyes flashing gold, and he stumbles back for a second as something sears into his collarbone. “Can’t have another demon riding shotgun.”

The Doctor pauses to rub a hand over the spot while she races ahead into the middle of London, squinting in the rare burst of sunlight. “Couldn’t have landed straight at Canary Wharf?”

“Didn’t want to risk it. We can cut through the park.” The sunlight becomes hidden by the thick canopy of trees, shadows dappling the path. Rose loops her arm through the Doctor’s, leaning against his trenchcoat in the November chill.

“Do you ever get the feeling something’s following you?” he asks quietly. Rose’s hand instinctively goes to her waist, realizing a second later that she’s left her blade on the TARDIS. _Shit._

Instead she leans over into the flowerbed. “Pretend we’re discussing something important.” she says, fumbling around in the stones for a particularly sharp one.

“Like what?”

“Our impending doom.” She nearly cuts her hand open on the next one she touches; that’ll certainly do the job. “Now we turn around.”

The Doctor is especially good at this part- pretending that he’s supposed to have been there all along. “Oh, hello!” he says cheerily. “Did you want something?”

Rose is a bit more confused than anything. She expected demons, or one of the nastier angels, but not these two. “Castiel. Uriel. Is something wrong?”

Cas looks up at Uriel, something passing between them. “I’ll finish it.” Uriel declares, and pounces at her like on a cat on a mouse. Rose drops out of the reach of his blade on instinct, rolling back to her feet so she’s backed up against a tree. The Doctor visibly changes, stiffening up, his eyes hardening. _They don’t know_ , he thinks, _but I was once a soldier too._

Rose meets his eyes shakily and winks, the signal that she actually has an idea of what she’s going to do.

He grabs Uriel’s suit from behind, twisting his wrist back so the blade goes clattering out of his hand. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”

Behind him, Rose remains backed against the tree, slicing open her hand with the rock until blood starts to drip off her fingertips, sketching clumsily into the wood a sigil seared into her mind. Without looking at it she can’t tell if it’s right; she can only hope she remembers.

Uriel seems to decide he doesn’t need his blade after all, landing a nasty right hook on the Doctor’s face. He stumbles back a bit, but hadn’t even made an attempt to dodge in the interest of buying Rose time. Cas suddenly realizes what she’s doing and makes a move at her, but then Rose presses her hand into the middle of the finished sigil. Both angels stop in place, flickering in and out of existence, before disappearing completely with a static buzz.

Rose leans back against the tree, heart ripping a hole in her chest. “You okay?”

In response the Doctor cracks his neck, seemingly unaware of the fact half his face is bleeding. “That was a hell of a punch. Your hand-”

“What-oh, it’s nothing.” She goes to heal it herself, but the Doctor has already undone his tie and wrapped it around the cut. It’s so sweet she just lets it go for the time being. “Angel banishing sigil. They’ll be floating for a few hours.”

“Yes, but why did they attack us? You said Castiel was the one who pulled you _out_ of hell.”

“I think it’s time we paid the Winchesters a visit.”

.......................

“Oh, no. No, no way. Um, they probably don't even know I exist. I just kind of... overhear them.” Anna stutters.

“Wait. You’re on angel radio?” Sam says.

“You’ve heard of this before?”

“It’s the reason we chased you into town. We’ve got another friend who’s a lot like you- voices in her head, mysterious superpowers. Friend of ours thinks she used to be an angel.” Dean would never have followed this case on Ruby’s word alone. Rose may be AWOL at the moment, but Anna reeks of the same weirdness she does.

“Used to be?” Anna tilts her head. “I’m not sure I-”

“Well, whatever she is, it makes sense why the demons want her. She’s 1-800 Angel.” Sam says. “Makes me wonder why Rose hasn’t gotten herself attacked yet.”

“She’s not on the record with a case of the crazies like Anna. They could just not know.”

“Hey, are my parents ok?” Anna starts. “I was scared, I didn’t get a chance to go home-”

The door to the church attic bursts open with a crash, Ruby and Martha running in. Martha turns to throw a chair against the door in a hopeless barricade, gun aimed at the door. Anna recoils at the sight of Ruby, pointing with a shaking hand. “Her face!”

“It’s ok, I’m one of the nice ones.” Ruby reassures. “Well. The nice one.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that.” Dean growls, but only loud enough for Sam to hear.

“We got a demon coming in hot, we’ve got to go.” Martha is staying on the door with laser focus.

“One of the big-timers.” adds Ruby.

“And how do we know you didn’t drag him here yourself?”

“Because he followed you, Dean. From the girls house. We’ve got to-”

Something crashes on the stairs.

“Alright. New plan. Sam, you’ve got to pull him right away. We can’t risk waiting, or we’ll all be dead.”

“Woah, woah, woah-”

Sam grabs Anna by her shoulder, ignoring Dean’s protests. “Hide.” he orders. “Martha, stay with her. I don’t think the usuals are going to be much good.”

“Don’t bitch about Sam using his powers. Either Sam pulls him or we die.” Ruby follows Martha into the alcove, staring Dean down as she goes.

The door to the attic crashes open, the demon riding in the body of an older man. Sam raises his hand to pull the demon, gripping out at that little dark cloud around the man’s soul, but it slips out of his grasp. The demon laughs and clutches at his throat comically. “That tickles.”

......................

 

“Glad you could make it.” Ruby says sarcastically as Sam walks into the cabin.

“How’s Anna?” he asks instead.

“Scared, but recovering.” Martha walks out of the back room and leans against the doorpost. “How come she couldn’t pull the demon herself? I told you, I watched Rose do it. Twice.”

“Yeah, well, Rose is weird on her own scale.”

“Who’s Rose?” Anna peeks out from the room. “Is she that other friend you mentioned?”

Dean nods.

“But she remembers being an angel, right?  If I’m the same, how come I don’t?”

“She didn’t, not at first. Then she got attacked and it jogged her memory.” Martha replies.

“I’m still not sure she’s really who she says she is, if you’ll remember, she pulled a number on you.”

“Dean, I followed her into the alleyway. That box disappeared into thin air.”

“The box that is supposedly bigger on the inside. Sounds kind of trippy to me, I’m thinking she was just a djinn.”

“No one ever went unconscious.”

“Yeah, well maybe she’s a new one. It’s happened before.”

“Um.” Anna cuts in. “I’ve been meaning to ask- can I risk a phone call? My parents- they must be so worried about me-”

Sam and Martha exchange a glance, and Martha sits down on the couch, motioning for Anna to join her. “Anna, I’m so sorry- but by the time we got to the house-”

“Oh, no. No, they can’t.”

“I’m sorry.” Martha repeats.

“Why is this happening to me?” she sobs. “No, not now. Dean, they’re coming.”

“Ok. Martha, back room with Anna. Ruby, stay with us.”

“Where’s the demon knife?” Ruby realizes suddenly that neither of the boys seem to be in possession of it anymore.

“Yeah, we uh- we kind of dropped it.”

“Great. Impeccable timing.”

The cabin doors burst open with the usual fanfare of supernatural beings- seriously, do they all have an agreement to be dramatic or something- and in stroll Castiel and Uriel, coats flapping in their conjured wind.

“Oh, good, here to help. We’ve been having demon issues all day.” Dean sighs, although his internal monologue is more along the lines of thank fuck it’s the good angels.

“I can see that.” snarls Uriel, looking very plainly at Ruby. “We’ve come for Anna.”

“Here to protect her?” Ruby seems suspicious.

“Here to kill her.” Cas shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Dean, but she has to die.”

“Woah, woah, woah. I know she’s wiretapping your little angel chats, but she’s not exactly the first. No reason to gank her on the spot.”

“We’ll kill her gently.” says Uriel. “And then we’ll deal with the other problem. Less gently.”

Martha can see something flickering along the side of Uriel’s neck, the vestige of some spell. She had a friend up in Cardiff, Ianto, who’d dabbled in white magic. He’d taught her how to recognize spells like this. “They’ve already tried to kill Rose.” she says with a smirk. “And she kicked their asses six ways to Saturday.”

“You heartless sons of bitches.” Even with his doubts about Rose, he can’t help but feel proud that she took down a pair of angels solo.

“Yes, yes we are.” Cas deadpans. “Now give us the girl.”

“Don’t think we won’t fight you.” Uriel adds, pinning Ruby against the wall with a flick of his hand. Dean mentally preps to go mano a mano with the angels when they both freeze in place, light flickering statically off them, before vanishing entirely.

“Son of a bitch.” Dean says softly, before making the mental connection. “Anna? Anna!”

She stumbles out of the back room, knife in one hand, palm flayed open, fingers tipped with her own blood.

“I don’t know what happened,” she stutters, gesturing at the carmine sigil on the wall, “it just popped into my head-”

“We’re getting you out of here.” Dean announces as Sam bandages her hand. “And then we’re calling Pamela, because I really need to know what the fuck you are.”

...............................

“So you _were_ an angel.” Martha sums up. “But you couldn’t remember until Pamela stuck you in hypnosis. Did you know Cas and Uriel?”

“Yeah, we were kind of in the same foxhole.”

“What, are they your heavenly commanders?” says Dean.

“Try the other way around.” says Anna with a smile, watching the Winchester boys go a little bit impressed.

Suddenly a wind blows through the library even though the windows are shut, ruffling papers and sending several sheets flying. With it comes the sound of a groaning, creaking car, the rough outline of a blue box starting to develop in the center of the room. Both Dean and Sam make a move for their guns, but Martha hesitates. “That’s-”

“That’s what?” Pamela snaps. “It’s a box. That appeared out of nowhere. In your boys’ library.”

The door cracks with a whine, Rose and a ruffle-haired man slipping out and closing the doors tight enough that no one else in the room can get a peek inside. “Oh. Guns. I don’t react well when there are guns pointed at me.” he snarls.

“I told you they were trigger happy.”  

“Who are you?” Dean says tightly. He feels like roaring. There is a box,  a box that he was ridiculing Martha about, in the middle of Bobby’s library, and he’s not too happy about having been proven wrong.

“Guns.” snaps the man, but neither of the Winchesters budge.

“Let me.” grins Rose, and Dean finds himself inexplicably compelled to set his pistol on the nearest table, watching with horror as her eyes grow gold. Stories are one thing; Rose in action still creeps the fuck out of him.

Her friend seems a bit disturbed as well, but shakes it off, extending a hand. “Hello! I’m the Doctor. Nice to meet you boys at last. And what is this?” He starts darting around the library excitedly, picking things up with the exuberance of a child. “All these holy texts- Christian, Roman, Mesopotamia- had tea with Enkidu once, lovely fellow- is that Kurdish? Haven’t seen one of those in forever. Oh! You’re not translating, what are you?” He picks up a slim volume and flicks through the pages, and Rose slides in beside him. “That’s Enochian. “ she explains.

“Really? Thought the translation matrix would catch that, _welll_ , it does have its limits. Still, quite the fascinating collection. Oh!” The remnants of Bobby’s last spell are still sitting out on his desk. “Rosemary, silver, salt, lamb’s blood- well, it’s actually from a little known invasive species but I think it still counts- this is Carrionite. Mostly Carronite. Blimey, the stuff of legend, right before my eyes.”

“Is he-” starts Dean.

“Always.” replies Rose before he can finish the sentence, smiling around the word. “See, boys, we’re having a bit of an angel problem.”

“What, did Cas and Uriel attempt to put the drop on you too?”

“Yes, they did. And I’d really like to know about that,because according to Rose, they should be friends.” The Doctor slows down to a more lethal pace, and Sam recognizes something in the way he talks, manically reverting the subject right where he wants it. He may not be a hunter, but he’s certainly got all the qualifying marks.

“Yeah, well, angels are dicks. It’s not that easy.” Dean still seems kind of bitter over the whole thing, or maybe perpetually bitter is just his style, the Doctor isn’t sure yet.

“Who is she?” Anna speaks up at last, Pamela and Ruby at either side, eyes wide. “Have we met?”

Rose turns her head and freezes just the same. “I-I think we have.” She tests a name in her head, rolling it around and making sure she’s certain before it spills onto her lips. “Anael?”

Anna nods. “Arkytiel. It’s you, isn’t it.”

They meet in a bone crushing hug, and Dean just throws his arms up, utterly surrendering. “Great. Two ex-angels. Twice the demons on our ass.”

“You got lucky, sis.” Rose smiles. “That is some glorious hair.”

“What, so your sister gets to be ginger and I don’t?” the Doctor preens, and she shoves him off playfully.

“How much do you remember?” Anna asks her.

“Enough.” She settles back and stares off into space for a fraction of a second. “Anael, I don’t-”

“It’s Anna, and neither do I.”

“Woah, stop the crypticness. What is it you don’t want to do?”

“Get our Graces back, become angels again.”

“That’s a good thing, though. Two angels I can count on not disappearing!”

Anna shakes her head. “If only it were that simple. Angels- they don’t have quite the same capacity for emotion that humans do. It’s capable for them to learn to, but it’s not the same. Being human- I don’t want to lose that.”

“I’m starting to think we don’t have a choice.” Rose mutters.

“There’s always a choice.”

“Heaven wants us dead, Hell wants us very much alive. How long can we stand having both armies at us? Always running?”

“We never stopped.” the Doctor says softly, lacing his fingers into hers.

“We can’t just snatch Anna up in our magic box and run for the stars. We’d never be able to come home again. The universe is wonderful, Doctor, but I don’t think I could handle that.”

“I just want to keep you safe.”

“Maybe there’s a way.” Sam’s mind is churning. “Anna, would it be possible to take the Graces without reclaiming them? Just keep them loose?”

“Yes, but having two free Graces like that- it’s the angelic equivalent of a loose nuke.”

“And when you have all of space and time at your disposal, loose nukes are very easy to hide.” says the Doctor.

“Really, Doc. All of space and time.” Pamela’s not buying it one bit.

“It appeared in your library, and I’m telling ya, it’s bigger on the inside.” Martha vouches. “I don’t think all of space and time is that much of a stretch.”

“I’ll believe that when I- well, I would say see it, but you know. I’m blind. Dean, will you take me home? I think I’m done here.”

“Sure thing, Pamela. Sammy, get on our missing Graces.”

“Alright then.” He turns to Rose and Anna helplessly. “Please tell me you’ve got something, because I have no idea where to start.”

“We were falling several hundred thousand miles an hour. Someone must have seen us.”

“A meteor?” suggests the Doctor. “One over London and one over the States?”

“Here. Two in 86, right around the time Anna was born. Rose?”

“That’s right. Same time of year?”

“No, a couple months apart. What about your Graces?”

“Probably would have fallen at the same time, but I don’t know if they’d be in the same place. It’s tough to remember. Look for some kind of miracle.”

“Hang on, I think I might have something.” Sam wades deeper into the internet, eyes focused.

“You’re pretty buff for a nerd.” Ruby laughs, then looks at Rose. “What’s your problem?”

“Sorry, it’s just- I know you’re on our side, otherwise we’d be dead, but-”

“The face, I know.” Ruby shakes it off; Anna keeps doing the same thing.

“Here!” Sam shouts in triumph. “Kentucky, they call it the miracle twins. It’s a pair of oaks that grew in about six months, they look about a hundred years old. So the Graces, instead of destruction they’re-”

“Pure creation.” Rose nods. “Once Dean gets back, we should hit the road.”

“Or they should hit the road.” the Doctor reminds her. “We’ve got a fast forward button.”

“Yeah, of course. See you guys tomorrow morning!”

“Wait- where are you-”

Sam’s organized stack of papers is destroyed as the TARDIS dematerializes.

“See.” says Martha. “I told you it did that.”

..........................

Rose is digging around in the TARDIS library as they rocket toward the field in Kentucky, rooting in one of the disorganized artifact boxes. She emerges a second later with a pair of glass bottles, tiny things the size of her thumb, each dangling from a chain.

“What’s that?” the Doctor asks, slipping the TARDIS comfortably into the vortex so she can finish her task.

“These should work, right?” she says dangling them in front of his face. “A Grace is pure energy, they’re artron-forged exoglass,they should- oh.”

She stops as she babbles, staring at them sadly.

“Is this it?” she asks. “Is this what I’m like, is this what I become, if I go nuclear again? Just like you?”

“You don’t have to.” he reminds her.

“The closer we get, the more I remember, and I-I don’t want it.” she says. “All these thoughts- they’re not me. Arkytiel- she is and she isn’t me, and I don’t wanna lose- I like being Rose Tyler, I like her life and her love and I don’t want to let go.”

She slides into his arms like breathing, some sort of desperation in her voice.

“We could still run off.” he says. “I could alter your memory, you wouldn’t have to remember being her. It’d be just like it used to be.”

“We both know that’s never really been an option. You can’t run off from people who need you.”

“For you I could.”

“No. No, don’t. I know you wanted to say that,” she guesses, “after last night, but it’s not that simple. We can’t just take a magic potion and wish all our troubles away. We can’t run, not all the time. Not anymore. This- this is why I chose to fall, to become human, instead of just letting my superiors catch up with me. Life, all of it, the good and the bad; it’s better than being above it. It’s the one thing I’m glad I remember about being an angel.”

He nods and holds her there for a second. “Promise you’ll try to stay with me.” Truth is, he’s scared of losing her to someone else too.

“Of course I will.”

After a minute he lets them materialize properly, stepping out into the morning sunlight, Rose taking off towards the pair of oaks towering in the farm field. Anna and company are making an appearance over the other ridge, Anna dashing off with equal urgency. “It’s here,” she shouts, “I can feel it!”

“Not, it’s not.” breathes Rose, skin making contact with bark. “It’s not here.”

[ ](http://24.media.tumblr.com/76750780c6270fe88072339979f14ef7/tumblr_mx55vo1J0y1s20st6o2_1280.png) 

“Well, where is it?” Dean sighs.

“I don’t know! ” Rose bites down on her lip. “Someone's taken it.”

...............

“What do we do now?” asks Sam. “Head back to the bunker permanently? She can’t protect us, Dean, neither of them can.”

“Wait. What do you mean, ‘protect us?’ We decided she wouldn’t have to go back!” snaps the Doctor.

“And we have the collective armies of Heaven and Hell on our ass, what else are we going to do? Your problem, Doc, is that you don’t think far enough ahead. You’re over there having your little pow wow about how you’re going to save both of them and everyone’s going to be ok, it doesn’t work like that. I’m still not sure if I should shoot you, if I can even trust you. I don’t know what rulebook you’re following, but it’s sure as a hell a lot more fairytale than this one.”

“Doctor.” says Rose, face white, at the same instant Anna calls out for Dean.

“What?”

“It’s the angels, they’ve ordered an ultimatum- ‘Give us the girls by midnight, or Dean Winchester is hurled straight back to damnation.’”

Dean is struck dumb for a moment, then launches into an even crazier rant. “Do we have anything we could use to kill an angel?”

Rose nods, unsheathing her angel blade. “This will, but- we don’t know how many angels they’ll bring. It can only go so far.”

“Dammit. _Shit_. Sam, we gotta call Bobby.”

“And what good would that do, what don’t we know that he doesn’t?”

“I don’t know, think of something!”

.....................

A few hours later, the Doctor finds Rose in the hayloft of the barn,legs dangling over the edge, staring at the floor below. “You okay?” he asks, ascending the ladder, and she just shakes her head.

“Anna ran off with Dean.” she informs him. “Something about their ‘last night on Earth.’ I assume he does this a lot.”

“We could-”

“No.” She looks back at the hayloft. “Not here, not now.”

“Just thought I’d offer.” He sits down beside her and offers out his hand, but hers stay still by her side.

“You wouldn’t happen to have anything in the TARDIS, would you?” she asks.

“Not that I can think of, no. And anyways, you were the one lecturing me about shortcuts.”

“Yeah. I know.” Her voice is flat and thin, eyes completely tuned out to the world again.

“What’s the matter?”

“They want to throw him back in. And I realized- if I weren’t special, I wouldn’t be here at all. I’d still be down there.” She lets his fingers catch onto hers now, thumb making circles on her wrist.

“Why’d they pull you out if they were just going to kill you again?”

“Orders change.” Rose tries turns her head away so he can’t see her cry, but it’s there anyways. “It’s not an angel’s place to question them. I’ve been thinking- maybe I should just do it.”

“Don’t you dare.” he hisses.

“If I let them kill me, I’ll go to Heaven. But if I don’t, Dean gets put back in Hell, and that’s- I couldn’t do that to anyone. Ever.”

“What if there’s another way?”

“And what if there’s not? What if Dean’s right?”

“Don’t talk like that.” He pulls her over to kiss her forehead. “We’ll figure this one out.”

“I’m sorry.” she mutters. “For coming back such a mess.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m lucky to have you back at all. And if it helps...I get it, I really do. I’ve sort of been where you are.”

“And what happened?”

“A very smart girl by the name of Rose Tyler put me back together.  I’ll wait. As long as you need.”

She sighs and collapses against him; it’s the only action she seems capable of these days.

 _You saved me,_ the Doctor thinks, _so I guess it’s my turn._

Dean and Anna return ten minutes before midnight.

Ruby is nowhere to be found.

When the clock strikes, Rose descends from the hayloft, almost glowing in the moonlight. She looks like the real thing, gliding over the rungs like she can fly, but there is still something very solid to it, both angelic and human.

“I won’t let them take you.” the Doctor tells her again, but there’s no promise behind his words. There’s nothing he can actually do. They have a shot in the dark, a single angel blade, and that’s it.

She hands it to Dean- he is, after all, the better fighter- and prays for the best.

Castiel and Uriel crash open the doors to the barn right on cue, but Dean doesn’t make a move to fight back. Instead he reaches out with the blade and hands it to Cas.

“Thank you.” Uriel purrs. “I knew you’d see sense.”

“What the hell are you doing?” The Doctor bellows, and Dean’s lucky he’s unarmed, otherwise he has the feeling he’d be shot on the spot.

“They gave me a choice!” he shouts back. “Either them or Sammy.”

He turns to her, desperate. “Rose-”

“It’s ok.” she says, voice breaking a little bit. “Everything’s going to be just fine.” She unlocks her fingers from his hand, the Doctor in too much shock to do anything but let go. He can’t lose her. Not like this.

“I’m sorry.” Castiel offers. “I rescued you, but-”

“I know. Orders change.” She looks down at the ground. “Just get it over with, ok?”

Then Castiel freezes.

“What is it?” Sam says wildly.

“Alastair.” he growls. The demon himself has appeared behind the humans with his own small entourage, and Ruby holding her guts in, looking like death warmed over. “Get out of here. This is angelic business.”

“Oh don’t worry. We’ll make sure they’re punished.”

“You know what we’ll do.” Uriel warns. “Leave, or we will destroy you.”

“I don’t think so.”

Then- quite literally- all hell breaks loose.

Dean grabs Rose and Anna, dragging them down and out of the way, the Doctor grabbing hold of the fallen angel blade as Cas summons his own. “Was this the plan?” he hisses at Dean, cowering behind the hay bale. “Draw them together and let them kill each other while we run?”

“Yeah, sort of!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Ruby crawls into another corner with Sam, leaning on him for support, when one of Alastair’s entourage goes down and Rose makes a leap out of her hidey-hole. She must see something no one else can, because she makes straight for Uriel, dodging his attack and pinning him against a support beam. She scuffles for a minute before snatching something off his neck, a pair of vials dangling in her hand, glowing too bright to see.

“Shut your eyes!” she shouts, the light from the vials growing brighter in her hand, static crackling around her in arcing flashes. The other demon makes a lunge for her in a desperate maneuver, but the Doctor tightens his grip on the angel blade and shoves it through his back in a combination of pure fury and old instinct. He turns away at the last possible moment, light singing his retinas.

When he opens his eyes, both Rose and Anna are gone.

Cas swears, something soft in Enochian, and vanishes along with Uriel. Alastair is gone, possibly having been thrown back to Hell in the burst of heavenly light. All that’s left is the body of the demon that slides at the Doctor’s feet. “Rose? Rose!”

There’s a sound like a dove escaping the rafters. “Right here.”

She looks _different,_ hair scattered wildly in twisting chunks, dressed for the Apocalypse in tattered tan and white instead of her leather jacket. “Hello!” she waves. “I didn’t go very far- well, jumped around a bit, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, all the old haunts, just to throw off the scent. They shouldn’t be able to find me now.”

The Doctor just stares at her, breathing heavily, unable to speak, but Den is certainly capable. “Where’s Anna?”

“Safe, but I’m not going to tell you where. Too many angels rolling around in your head. And she’s still human, by the way. Still has her Grace-in-a-bottle. If she wants her wings back, it’s her choice.”

“And what about you?” The Doctor finds his voice at last. “All those things we talked about- you just threw all that away?”

“Well, I had to save you.”

“No, no, no, you can’t- you said you wanted to keep all of it. Even the hard parts, the bad emotions. Do you just get an angel bandaid now, run off again?”

“If you want.” Something shifts in her eyes, staring at him with sad eyes, shaking her head as she looks away.

The gesture is not very angelic at all.

It’s so out-of-character that even _Dean_ , the person that the Doctor effortlessly considers the thickest in the room, notices. “What’d you do?”

She lets out a long breath. “Blimey, that took you a while to catch on. Would have told you straight away, but I wasn’t sure who’d be listening.”

“Rose?” He’s trying to figure out what’s going on here, but it’s not easy. “Ohhh. You let Anna keep her choice, that’s a very human thing to do.”

She reaches for the chain around her neck, drawing out one of the Grace bottles she’d stolen from Uriel.

It’s half full.

“I don’t-”

“I didn’t want to take all of it, didn’t want to go full-blown angel, why would I? So I only took back what I needed to get you guys out alive and save Anna. I’ve still got the wings, still got all the nice little tools-” -and he catches a flash of an angel blade, hers, not the borrowed one- at her belt- “-but I also to get to keep all those human emotions. Limited Grace, I can run out, overextend myself. Part human, part angel.”

“You can do that?” says Sam with disbelief.

“I can. Anna wouldn’t have been able to, but I’m, you know, different.” Her eyes flash gold as she purrs the last word.

“You're still you.” says the Doctor.

“Still me.”

She smiles for the first time in too long, and he leans over to kiss her, hands wrapped around her waist, taking his time. Sam makes a little noise in the back of his throat. “Is this necessary?” he coughs.

“Absolutely.” grins Rose as she pulls back.

He understands now, what she’s sacrificed. She’d had the opportunity to get rid of it, all that trauma and pain from Hell; it would have been as simple as becoming a fullblown angel again. But she’s held on to it, in order to keep everything else, for Anna and the Winchesters and her friends.

She’s not ok, won’t be for a while, if ever, but she had  a chance to be and she left it.

For _him._

**Author's Note:**

> My summaries have improved, and I'm not posting this at an ungodly hour. I didn't think it was possible.  
> Would the tag technically be nephilim!Rose now? Because she's half-angel? I really need an opinion on this, I genuinely don't know.  
> As always, thanks for hanging on to this little fic of mine. I know it's nowhere near as popular as some of my others, but I love writing it and hope you love it as much as I do.


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